I have three sets of audio roommates. One set and I share a living room/kitchen wall. They also share with me their joy at a touchdown in a televised football game, their disappointment at a loss in basketball, and the excitement and squealing tires of video games.
Another set of audio roommates shares a bedroom wall with me. By 2 a.m., alcohol has propelled the woman's voice into my bedroom. Alcohol increases her linguistic creativity; the F word morphs from a verb into an adjective, a noun, an adverb, then back to a verb.
For many weeks the focus of her linguistic skills was "David." The verbal onslaught would still briefly during vigorous sex, then immediately resume. Oxytocin ("the love hormone"), which is produced during sex and triggers feelings of romantic love and contentment, was powerless against her anger. When David was present, the woman cried in frustration and disappointment. When he left, she wailed in loneliness. The cycle repeated several times.
I moved my pillows to the end of the bed farthest from the wall and directly under the window. It attenuates the noise and lets me watch the moon slide toward the western horizon while I wait to fall asleep again.
One night, a previous set of bedroom audio roommates shared "Don't hit me!" and the sounds of someone being beaten. The police responded to my call with a knock on their door loud enough for me to hear. The beater did not go to jail and the beaten did not go to the hospital, but there was no audio feed in my bedroom for two weeks. The woman moved back to her mother's a short time later.
My third set of audio roommates fills my life with every event in the apartment below me. For three years the apartment has been a revolving door of nearly interchangeable young couples who smoke and test the boundaries set by the apartment managers. The current occupants own a TV that goes to 11; they like 11.
My current downstairs audio roommates are happy in a new romance and their first apartment. In less than two moths the midnight noise has escalated from shouting and door slamming to the sounds of a lengthy physical battle accompanied by a stream of insults in a male voice. I couldn't tell if he was battling with his girlfriend or with the furniture and walls. I did not call the police, as attacking household objects is not illegal.
The next morning the couple was in the living room, singing a cappella and having sex.
I want to escape the sound track of violence that fills my apartment. But moving would not end the violence; it would only keep me from hearing it.
A friend, whose wife is an Assistant District Attorney in a large U.S. city, summed up my reluctance to call the police as the "ambiguity in our collective social contract that lets abusers get away with abuse, and sometimes murder." His wife handles many cases where women did not get the opportunity to say, "Don't hit me" or whose cries were not heard. These are murder cases.
I asked a police officer when it is appropriate to call. Although involving the police can sometimes put the woman in danger or drive her to side with her abuser, the police are skilled at defusing violence. He told me to call next time.
The officer cautioned me against becoming so emotionally involved in the problem that it interfered with my life. He reminded me that women in abusive relationships often believe that the violence is caused by their shortcomings; that the beatings are "their fault." The women love the men despite the abuse. He described his personal heartbreak at unsuccessfully encouraging women to leave abusive relationships.
The Women's and Children's Alliance (WCA), in Boise, estimates that one in four women is the victim of domestic violence at some time in their lives. A staff member told me that only the women know when it is safe for them to escape. Her agency provides resources to help victims leave an unsafe situation and to help both abusers and victims learn new communication skills.
The WCA provides "sock cards," small enough to conceal in a sock. Available in English and Spanish, the cards help victims recognize when they are in an abusive relationship, develop a safety plan, and escape.
WCA staff members can provide training for apartment managers in Boise. I will contact management companies to arrange trainings, and then I will keep the participants' rental offices supplied with sock cards and other resources.
I live in an apartment because it is ecologically and economically the least expensive option.
Apartments consume fewer resources and less energy than single family homes. Multi-unit dwellings promote infill, which allows more people to walk, bike, and bus to work, shopping, and entertainment. Our economy is still reeling from the recent stampede to buy and sell houses.
I hope that apartment managers in Boise will work to provide safe and pleasant homes for all of their residents. Living in apartments will help us live more lightly on the Snake River Plain. Replacing violence with more effective communication will help make Boise a more peaceful and happy place for everyone.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The Thin Green Line
Someone mentioned using early spring grazing to control cheatgrass the other day. My response is, “Let’s think about it very carefully.”
Cheatgrass is a small plant with a large impact. It blankets miles of the Intermountain West with a carpet of dry tinder in summer. Lightening or a cigarette tossed out of a car can ignite a blaze that spreads from plant to plant.
Fire moves more easily through a stand of cheatgrass than it does through native sagebrush steppe vegetation. Natives survive the dry climate by growing in clumps, or bunches, to reduce competition for water, which makes it harder for fire to jump from one to the next.
Vegetation at lower elevations of the Sagebrush Sea, such as the Snake River Plain, did not evolve with frequent fires. The clumped plants do not provide the continuous fuel bed that fire needs in order to spread. Sagebrush, the icon of the Intermountain West, is killed by fire. Frequent fires can remove sagebrush from large areas and eliminate this important food for sage grouse and pygmy rabbit.
The increased frequency of cheatgrass-aided fires in areas where the vegetation did not evolve with fire destroys and damages the native vegetation. This makes it more difficult for the plants to recover after the next fire or other disturbance.
Cheatgrass and our native plants
Introduced from the Mediterranean region, cheatgrass is an exotic species. The seeds germinate easily in disturbed areas where people, machines, animals, or fires have damaged or destroyed the vegetation. Cheatgrass thrives in empty lots in Boise and where wildfires have removed native vegetation on the Snake River Plain.
As an annual plant, cheatgrass lives only one year. The plants grow rapidly in the moist, mild days of April and May and produce seeds before they die in the dry heat of June. Cheatgrass avoids the hot, dry summer by waiting as seeds. The seeds then establish new stands in the fall or the next spring.
Cheatgrass is thrifty and opportunistic; some say sneaky (its name is "cheat"). It uses the nutrients and water left in the soil when other plants are damaged or removed. Cheatgrass has been accused of "displacing" native vegetation, but it is actually a scavenger living off the leftovers of disturbance.
Making use of leftovers, cheatgrass rarely makes inroads into vigorous stands of vegetation, where the actively growing plants make use of the nutrients and water. Both our native vegetation and exotic plants that have been seeded after wildfires are able to keep cheatgrass at bay when they form healthy stands.
Unlike cheatgrass, which is an annual, most of our native grasses are perennial bunchgrasses, which live for many years. They avoid the hot, dry summer by going dormant. The grasses then resprout from their roots the next spring.
Forbs are the wildflowers that dazzle us with yellow pointillistic displays across the hills in spring. They survive summers either as seeds, like cheatgrass, or by going dormant, like perennial grasses.
Although plain, green grasses are not as pretty as forbs, it is grasses that do the heavy plant work. The durable leaves of grasses protect the soil year around, unlike forbs, which die back to their roots. The fibrous roots of grasses provide more protection for the soil than the narrow taproots of forbs.
Perennial grasses, whether native or seeded exotic species, are the Thin Green Line that protects us from cheatgrass.
When someone mentioned using early spring grazing to control cheatgrass, he reminded me of years when cheatgrass starts growing three weeks before the perennial grasses do. When the perennials begin to grow, the cattle are to eschew the tasty sprouts and stick to the now older, and less appetizing, cheatgrass.
I like cattle. They taste good and they work cheap. But I have never seen one politely decline a new, tender, green perennial grass.
I like perennial grasses, too. They work even cheaper (although they only work during the day, when they can tap sunlight for photosynthesis). They also do a better job of keeping cheatgrass out, when we allow them to do their work.
A White Water Analogy: Don’t look at the rock!
The hardest thing for me to learn when I started kayaking was, “Don’t look at the rock!” If you focus on the rock in the rapid, you will hit it every time. I proved this over and over until I finally learned to look at the smooth path I wanted to take through the rapid.
To run a rapid successfully, you must focus on where you need to be. Big rapids need to be scouted from the shore: first find where you want to come out at the bottom of the rapid. Then look back upstream to see where you need to be to get to your exit point, then look back to where you need to be to get to that place, etc. until you know where you need to enter the top of the rapid. Then jump in your boat, paddle hard, and focus on where you want to be. Don’t look at the rock!
We should use the same approach to managing cheatgrass. If we focus on the smooth path of healthy stands of perennial grasses, the grasses will keep cheatgrass at bay for us. If we focus on the rocky problem of cheatgrass, we will lose sight of our strongest ally in addressing the problem.
Let’s focus on the Thin Green Line
If we want to reduce cheatgrass in an area, reducing the number and size of plants is not enough. As an annual, cheatgrass waits out the summer to reestablish itself from seed. To reduce cheatgrass we must also reduce the number of seeds. Research has found that clipping cheatgrass plants once or twice does not prevent them from producing seeds. The plants must be grazed repeatedly, and at the proper stage of their growth, to significantly reduce the number of seeds produced.
After cattle have grazed an area the plants are shorter--all of them. There is less cheatgrass, but there is also less bluebunch wheatgrass, less Siberian wheatgrass, and less Sandburg bluegrass. We need to understand the effect of this early spring disturbance on the overall, long-term vigor of our perennial grasses. We all want vigorous stands of perennial grasses that are capable of competing strongly with cheatgrass and recovering quickly after fire and other disturbance.
I believe that early spring grazing will provide only the short-term satisfaction of seeing less cheatgrass for a brief period. I believe that early spring grazing will lead to the long-term problem of weakened perennial grasses. Without vigorous perennial grasses, I am afraid that we will spiral farther and farther down into an Intermountain West dominated by cheatgrass and ravaged by frequent fires.
Let’s do all we can to help the Thin Green Line help us.
Cheatgrass is a small plant with a large impact. It blankets miles of the Intermountain West with a carpet of dry tinder in summer. Lightening or a cigarette tossed out of a car can ignite a blaze that spreads from plant to plant.
Fire moves more easily through a stand of cheatgrass than it does through native sagebrush steppe vegetation. Natives survive the dry climate by growing in clumps, or bunches, to reduce competition for water, which makes it harder for fire to jump from one to the next.
Vegetation at lower elevations of the Sagebrush Sea, such as the Snake River Plain, did not evolve with frequent fires. The clumped plants do not provide the continuous fuel bed that fire needs in order to spread. Sagebrush, the icon of the Intermountain West, is killed by fire. Frequent fires can remove sagebrush from large areas and eliminate this important food for sage grouse and pygmy rabbit.
The increased frequency of cheatgrass-aided fires in areas where the vegetation did not evolve with fire destroys and damages the native vegetation. This makes it more difficult for the plants to recover after the next fire or other disturbance.
Cheatgrass and our native plants
Introduced from the Mediterranean region, cheatgrass is an exotic species. The seeds germinate easily in disturbed areas where people, machines, animals, or fires have damaged or destroyed the vegetation. Cheatgrass thrives in empty lots in Boise and where wildfires have removed native vegetation on the Snake River Plain.
As an annual plant, cheatgrass lives only one year. The plants grow rapidly in the moist, mild days of April and May and produce seeds before they die in the dry heat of June. Cheatgrass avoids the hot, dry summer by waiting as seeds. The seeds then establish new stands in the fall or the next spring.
Cheatgrass is thrifty and opportunistic; some say sneaky (its name is "cheat"). It uses the nutrients and water left in the soil when other plants are damaged or removed. Cheatgrass has been accused of "displacing" native vegetation, but it is actually a scavenger living off the leftovers of disturbance.
Making use of leftovers, cheatgrass rarely makes inroads into vigorous stands of vegetation, where the actively growing plants make use of the nutrients and water. Both our native vegetation and exotic plants that have been seeded after wildfires are able to keep cheatgrass at bay when they form healthy stands.
Unlike cheatgrass, which is an annual, most of our native grasses are perennial bunchgrasses, which live for many years. They avoid the hot, dry summer by going dormant. The grasses then resprout from their roots the next spring.
Forbs are the wildflowers that dazzle us with yellow pointillistic displays across the hills in spring. They survive summers either as seeds, like cheatgrass, or by going dormant, like perennial grasses.
Although plain, green grasses are not as pretty as forbs, it is grasses that do the heavy plant work. The durable leaves of grasses protect the soil year around, unlike forbs, which die back to their roots. The fibrous roots of grasses provide more protection for the soil than the narrow taproots of forbs.
Perennial grasses, whether native or seeded exotic species, are the Thin Green Line that protects us from cheatgrass.
When someone mentioned using early spring grazing to control cheatgrass, he reminded me of years when cheatgrass starts growing three weeks before the perennial grasses do. When the perennials begin to grow, the cattle are to eschew the tasty sprouts and stick to the now older, and less appetizing, cheatgrass.
I like cattle. They taste good and they work cheap. But I have never seen one politely decline a new, tender, green perennial grass.
I like perennial grasses, too. They work even cheaper (although they only work during the day, when they can tap sunlight for photosynthesis). They also do a better job of keeping cheatgrass out, when we allow them to do their work.
A White Water Analogy: Don’t look at the rock!
The hardest thing for me to learn when I started kayaking was, “Don’t look at the rock!” If you focus on the rock in the rapid, you will hit it every time. I proved this over and over until I finally learned to look at the smooth path I wanted to take through the rapid.
To run a rapid successfully, you must focus on where you need to be. Big rapids need to be scouted from the shore: first find where you want to come out at the bottom of the rapid. Then look back upstream to see where you need to be to get to your exit point, then look back to where you need to be to get to that place, etc. until you know where you need to enter the top of the rapid. Then jump in your boat, paddle hard, and focus on where you want to be. Don’t look at the rock!
We should use the same approach to managing cheatgrass. If we focus on the smooth path of healthy stands of perennial grasses, the grasses will keep cheatgrass at bay for us. If we focus on the rocky problem of cheatgrass, we will lose sight of our strongest ally in addressing the problem.
Let’s focus on the Thin Green Line
If we want to reduce cheatgrass in an area, reducing the number and size of plants is not enough. As an annual, cheatgrass waits out the summer to reestablish itself from seed. To reduce cheatgrass we must also reduce the number of seeds. Research has found that clipping cheatgrass plants once or twice does not prevent them from producing seeds. The plants must be grazed repeatedly, and at the proper stage of their growth, to significantly reduce the number of seeds produced.
After cattle have grazed an area the plants are shorter--all of them. There is less cheatgrass, but there is also less bluebunch wheatgrass, less Siberian wheatgrass, and less Sandburg bluegrass. We need to understand the effect of this early spring disturbance on the overall, long-term vigor of our perennial grasses. We all want vigorous stands of perennial grasses that are capable of competing strongly with cheatgrass and recovering quickly after fire and other disturbance.
I believe that early spring grazing will provide only the short-term satisfaction of seeing less cheatgrass for a brief period. I believe that early spring grazing will lead to the long-term problem of weakened perennial grasses. Without vigorous perennial grasses, I am afraid that we will spiral farther and farther down into an Intermountain West dominated by cheatgrass and ravaged by frequent fires.
Let’s do all we can to help the Thin Green Line help us.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
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